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To: Justin C who wrote (486703)	5/11/2012 1:40:35 PM
From: FUBHO	1 Recommendation of 537976

Facebook Co-Founder Saverin Gives Up U.S. Citizenship Before IPO By Danielle Kucera, Sanat Vallikappen and Christine Harper - May 11, 2012 11:10 AM CT bloomberg.com Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co-founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill. Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth about $3.84 billion. His holdings aren’t listed in Facebook’s regulatory filings. Saverin, 30, joins a growing number of people giving up U.S. citizenship, a move that can trim their tax liabilities in that country. The Brazilian-born resident of Singapore is one of several people who helped Mark Zuckerberg start Facebook in a Harvard University dorm and stand to reap billions of dollars after the world’s largest social network holds its IPO. “Eduardo recently found it more practical to become a resident of Singapore since he plans to live there for an indefinite period of time,” said Tom Goodman, a spokesman for Saverin, in an e-mailed statement. Saverin’s name is on a list of people who chose to renounce citizenship as of April 30, published by the Internal Revenue Service. Saverin renounced his U.S. citizenship “around September” of last year, according to his spokesman. Singapore doesn’t have a capital gains tax. It does tax income earned in that nation, as well as “certain foreign-sourced income,” according to a government website on tax policies there. Exit Tax Saverin won’t escape all U.S. taxes. Americans who give up their citizenship owe what is effectively an exit tax on the capital gains from their stock holdings, even if they don’t sell the shares, said Reuven S. Avi-Yonah, director of the international tax program at the University of Michigan’s law school. For tax purposes, the IRS treats the stock as if it has been sold. Renouncing your citizenship well in advance of an IPO is“a very smart idea,” from a tax standpoint, said Avi-Yonah.“Once it’s public you can’t fool around with the value.” Saverin previously scuffled with Zuckerberg, his Harvard University classmate, over his ownership in Facebook. Saverin sued him and settled for an undisclosed amount. The 2010 movie “The Social Network” added to Saverin’s fame after it portrayed him as a scorned friend who provided the company’s early financing and then was squeezed out. In the film, written by Aaron Sorkin, Saverin was portrayed by Andrew Garfield, who will play Spider-Man in “The Amazing Spider-Man.” Saverin’s Investments Saverin moved to the U.S. in 1992, and became a citizen in 1998, his spokesman said. He has invested in Asian, U.S. and European companies, according to his spokesman. He plans to invest in Brazilian and in other global companies that have strong interests in entering the Asian markets. “Accordingly, it made the most sense for him to use Singapore as a home base,” Goodman said in the statement. His U.S. holdings include Jumio Inc., an online payments company, and ShopSavvy Inc., a price-comparison service. Renouncing citizenship is an option chosen by increasing numbers of Americans. A record 1,780 gave up their U.S. passports last year compared with 235 in 2008, according to government records. Income-tax rates for top U.S. earners will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent next year, and rates on capital gains and dividends also are scheduled to rise unless Congress blocks the increases. ‘Tax Cost’ “It’s a loss for the U.S. to have many well-educated people who actually have a great deal of affection for America make that choice,” said Richard Weisman, an attorney at Baker & McKenzie in Hong Kong. “The tax cost, complexity and the traps for the unwary are among the considerations.” Some of the world’s largest wealth-management firms have ramped up efforts to fight tax evasion ahead of Washington’s implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. HSBC Holdings Plc, Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Singapore Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. all say they have turned away business. The 2010 law, to be phased in starting Jan. 1, 2013, requires financial institutions based outside the U.S. to obtain and report information about income and interest payments accrued to the accounts of American clients. That means additional compliance costs for banks and fewer investment options and advisers for all U.S. citizens living abroad, which may depress banks’ returns. Facebook plans to price its IPO on May 17, offering 337.4 million shares at $28 to $35 each. The shares will be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol FB. Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are leading the sale.

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From: LindyBill	5/11/2012 1:44:23 PM
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I don't care for this "friend" approach to the Internet. Seems like half the time I do a search it tries to send me somewhere. But the surveys must prove it fits most. A Revamping of Bing in the Battle for Search Engine Supremacy By NICK WINGFIELD BELLEVUE, Wash. — When Facebook goes public in the coming weeks, there will be a lot of winners. Among them is one of the stalwarts of the tech industry, Microsoft, which has a small stake in the company. But Microsoft has an even bigger bet on Facebook through an alliance between its Bing search engine and the social network. And that partnership is about to get even deeper. On Thursday, Microsoft introduced a set of changes to Bing that it says will improve searches by tapping into the expertise of friends on Facebook and other social networks. The company hopes to mine people’s online social connections to provide more personal search results for everything from hotel searches in Hawaii to movie recommendations. For example, if you are logged into your Facebook page through Bing, and you search for “best hotels in Maui,” you will get results with pictures of friends who have shared some affinity for Maui before on Facebook, whether by listing it as their hometown in their Facebook profile, liking the island on Facebook or posting photos from a previous Maui vacation. “This is a fundamentally different way to look at search,” Qi Lu, president of Microsoft’s online services division, said in a recent interview in a high-rise building here, a few miles from its main campus, where its Internet operations are based. The new version of Bing is the biggest overhaul to the search engine since Microsoft introduced it three years ago. It is the result of a continual conversation at the company about how to make Bing a more effective competitor to that other search engine — Google — and try to stem its considerable losses. In its last fiscal year, Microsoft reported operating losses from its online services division of $2.6 billion. Strengthening the ties between Bing and Facebook is also another sign of how Microsoft and Facebook are working together to provide a counterbalance to their common adversary, Google. While Google is by far the dominant player in the Internet search business, it also competes with Microsoft in productivity applications and with Facebook through its Google Plus social network. And like Microsoft, Google this year began to integrate data from its social network into its search results through an initiative it calls “search, plus your world.” Google declined to comment for this article. The alliance between Facebook and Microsoft, so far, has barely caused a dent in Google. The two companies first announced a plan to work together on what they called “social search” in late 2010, and a bit later began to pepper Bing search results with a limited amount of data it began to pull from Facebook. If a person searched for the movie “The Avengers,” for example, Bing would annotate the results to indicate whether the searcher’s Facebook friends had “liked” any of the Web pages found in that search previously on the social network. Microsoft executives said that approach, on its own, did not have much success, partly because it cluttered the display of search results. “It was a good experiment, but it wasn’t working in the way we expected,” said Derrick Connell, a corporate vice president of Bing program management. The new Bing has a much cleaner design that tucks all of the social search results away into a sidebar on the Bing search results pages, where they are now clearly distinct from the traditional Bing search results on the left side of the screen. But the revamping also goes much further in the kind of information it picks up from Facebook. For the search for “best hotels in Maui,” for example, the results will also allow searchers to post questions about favorite hotels to the friends with Maui expertise that Bing has identified, without leaving the Bing search results page. Microsoft executives say they will show only data from Facebook friends’ pages that could be seen by going directly to the pages. “Bing is taking a thoughtful approach to giving people the option to call on their friends as part of the search experience,” Ethan Beard, director of platform partnerships at Facebook, said. Bing will also suggest other people it deems to be “influential” on a particular search topic by scouring more public social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Quora. “I think Bing has very elegantly incorporated a lot of information into the search results page, which is a formidable challenge,” said Rebecca Lieb, an analyst at the Altimeter Group, who had seen the new Bing design. “What really remains to be seen is how users will accept this.” Microsoft’s effort to make Bing stand out from Google in the search business is led by Mr. Lu, a wiry, intense former Yahoo executive, who regularly asks his lieutenants to ponder an existential question for Microsoft’s search efforts. “This is one of our key challenges — answering the question, ‘Why Bing?’ ” Mr. Lu said recently, as he roamed in front of a whiteboard sketching out his vision for the evolution of search. Wall Street investors have asked that question too, ever since Microsoft years ago began plowing money into building a credible competitor to Google. Despite the financial losses, the company shows no sign of backing away from its investment. “On the business side, it’s really sort of questionable,” said Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities. Microsoft has gained a bigger portion of the United States search market, rising to 15.3 percent of searches in March, up from 13.9 percent in the same month a year earlier, according to comScore. But most of those gains appeared to come at the expense of Yahoo, not Google. Microsoft and Yahoo have a multiyear agreement in which Bing provides search results on Yahoo. In March, Google accounted for 66.4 percent of searches in the United States, according to comScore. What makes Google’s grip on the search market even more vexing is that there appears to be little difference between the quality of its search results and Bing’s. Microsoft regularly conducts blind tests of users in which it shows them Bing and Google search results side-by-side, without identifying which search engine the results are coming from. In recent tests, Microsoft said, most of those users said they favored Bing’s results. Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, a Web site devoted to Internet search, agrees that Bing and Google are “pretty even” in the quality of their search results. In theory, it’s extremely easy for people to switch to a new search engine. Yet, as Microsoft executives concede, Google has become a habit for people that is difficult to break. For most people, the idea of switching to Bing has seemed unnecessary, Mr. Sullivan said. “It’s like saying, Here’s another person who could be a great best friend for you,” he said. “Why don’t you become best friends with them?” nytimes.com

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From: LindyBill	5/11/2012 2:11:08 PM
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What Do Egyptians Want? A Democratically Elected Islamist Dictatorship by Barry Rubin Yes, friends, it’s once again time for that exciting game of Spin the Polls by the Pew Foundation. Here are the rules: Rule 1: Pew does a good job on the poll itself. Rule 2: The Pew analysis ignores or misunderstands the implications of the poll. Rule 3: The Western media and government misread the poll, often misinterpreting the results into the exact opposite of what they actually mean. They then adopt the wrong policies. Rule 4: If correctly interpreted the polls are a gold mine that can help us comprehend the present and predict the future. Some years ago, for example, I analyzed a Pew poll that we were told proved moderation because it showed that people in Arab and Muslim-majority countries had a low opinion of al-Qaida. In fact, as I wrote the poll showed a shockingly high level of support for revolutionary Islamism, especially in Egypt and Jordan. Once again we have the misleading spin beginning with the headline: “Egyptians Remain Optimistic, Embrace Democracy and Religion in Political Life.” If I were writing the headline it would be: “Egyptians Want Radical Islamist State More Than Anything Else.” To be fair to Pew, the lead of their analysis is something very significant that couldn’t have been imagined before now: “Opinions of the U.S. and President Obama continue to be overwhelmingly unfavorable.” This is somehow spun, however, to imply that there is no real crisis and that U.S. policy need not be reexamined or changed. After all, the Obama Administration’s role in helping to overthrow not just President Husni Mubarak (a reasonable action) but the entire regime brought no gain for the United States whatsoever. Instead it helped bring to power an anti-American regime likely to destabilize the region and bring war. The poll concludes that Egyptians still want the same type of relationship with the United States. But what does this mean other than continuing to take U.S. aid money? Using America as a scapegoat—as Middle Eastern dictatorships have done now for more than a half-century—it won’t be long before hate-America rallies, demagogic anti-American speeches, a lack of cooperation on issues, and violence-inciting broadcasts or articles become routine. You won’t be surprised to hear that two-thirds of Egyptians want to throw out the peace treaty with Israel. The U.S. Congress has properly determined that this would lead to an end of U.S. aid. So what will the next Egyptian government do? Simple, don’t throw out the treaty formally but just break it in every way possible. What’s most critical is how Egyptians think of their own country. Here’s a very revealing apparent contradiction. Read carefully. The Pew poll’s headline says that Egyptians are optimistic but that they also believe the economic situation is not good. Half of them claim things have gotten worse since Mubarak fell. Why then do 53 percent (albeit 65 percent) believe the country is headed in the right direction? The answer is that they are happy with the political direction—toward radical Islamism—but do not think it will improve their material lives. They make a distinction between material benefit and spiritual-ideological preference. Such a choice is never understood in the West, especially by those who argue that everyone wants the same things in life, so an Islamist regime must deliver prosperity or fall, and consequently that radicals must moderate in order to fill their people’s stomachs. Remember what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, architect of Iran’s revolution, said back in 1979: People in the West don’t understand that we didn’t make this revolution to lower the price of watermelons. No, the substitute for such material success is repression plus finding the right scapegoat and subsidizing certain key constituencies (notably the military), which brings us back to the antagonism against the need to build antagonism against the United States, Israel, and the West, doesn’t it? Another apparent contradiction is equally revealing. When asked whether they preferred to model Egypt on Saudi Arabia or Turkey regarding religion’s role in government, thy chose Saudi Arabia by a 61 to 17 percent margin. Note that Western pundits and experts keep insisting that there is some kind of Turkish model of moderate Islamism. Aside from the fact that Turks aren’t Arabs, this is a sign of the base of support for a fully sharia state. Remember that as Sunni Muslims, Egyptians are not going to cite Iran as their model. And when they are talking about Saudi Arabia they are not indicating its basic alliance with the United States but its extreme form of Islamic rule in domestic life. When asked if Egypt’s laws should strictly adhere to the Quran, 60 percent said yes while another 32 percent said it should follow the values and principles of Islam more generally. Let’s say that this 60 percent (see the Saudi model, above) is the firm base for Islamist rule. This is less than the 75 percent the Islamists received in the parliamentary elections, suggesting that 15 percent of these voters are not so totally for an Islamist society. That 32 percent are not “moderate Muslims” or “secularist Muslims” but they are non-Islamist Muslims. A few years ago there were a lot more of them but their ranks are steadily eroded by the advance of revolutionary Islamism. Since there is no strong alternative theological or political leadership in that direction, this is unlikely to be strong enough to block an Islamist transformation. And who is left as the genuine, secular or for a minimally religious state? The Christians, that’s about all. Pew makes much of supposed moderation by pointing out that two-thirds of those who endorsed the Saudi model also said democracy is their preferred form of government; 64 percent want a free press; 61 percent want free speech. But what does this really mean in the context of Egypt? Of course they support “democracy” since the alternative they have in mind is the hated Mubarak dictatorship. And what does democracy mean to them? A landslide victory for the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists! Thus, when they think about, “This is what democracy looks like,” that means eternal Islamist victories. As for a free press and free speech, that means diversity, though we should remember that proportionately newspaper reading in Egypt is tiny compared to the West. Yet what would happen if someone used this free press or free speech for something deemed critical of Islam? Already we are seeing people brought to court for saying things the Islamists don’t like. Yet the cases are heard by Mubarak-appointed judges. What will happen when the Islamists appoint the judges? The hypnotized observers in the West keep chanting that the Brotherhood has renounced violence and would never ever use force and intimidation. If you want to know what Egypt has in store consider the following: In 1992–under Mubarak’s regime–Farag Fouda, a fearless secularist, debated a Muslim Brotherhood leader at the Cairo Book Fair. Five months later, an Islamist assassinated Fouda. At the trial, a Muslim Brotherhood leader testified as a defense witness that the killing was the proper punishment for an apostate, at which point the defendant shouted, “Now I will die with a clear conscience.” That was a Mubarak court and the killer was found guilty. What will happen in an Islamist regime’s court? Many Egyptians will die, as will U.S. interests. Will the Western apologists and enablers have a clear conscience? PS: The Washington Post c overed very briefly the debate between two presidential candidates, the radical nationalist secularist, Abu Moussa, and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh. The Postarticle informs us that Aboul Fotouh is “considered a moderate Islamist.” By whom? In the debate, Aboul Fotouh said he would implement Sharia with supposed moderation. His formula, which the report missed, is that Sharia might not be imposed 100 percent. So much for moderation. The Post also reported that he called Israel the enemy of Egypt. But the article missed Aboul Fotouh’s signal about Israel, which he called “ built on occupation.” To any Egyptian that says: Israel is an illegitimate entity that has no right to exist. Abu Moussa personally has shown he hates Israel but also demonstrates why he would make a president more likely to keep Egypt out of war and disaster: “We have lots of disagreements. Most of our people consider it an enemy, but the responsibility of the president is to deal with such things responsibly and not run after hot-headed slogans.” In broader terms, this is the choice Egypt will have to make–radical ideology and hot-headed slogans or pragmatism. The electorate’s views; size of Egypt’s problems; lack of resources that would allow constructive policies that would improve people’s lives materially; parliament; drafters of the new Constitution, violent Salafists (who support Aboul Fotouh), and probably the president will all be in the former camp.

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